Sarah's heart sank. She could feel the ground slipping beneath her feet. Desperation flashed across her face before she gritted her teeth, crouched, and pulled another smaller case from the suitcase. She clicked it open with trembling hands.
Inside, nestled in velvet padding, were three gleaming gold bars.
Under the pale sunlight, they shone with a warm, tempting glow—symbols of wealth, power, and safety in the old world.
Sarah pushed the case forward and bowed her head deeply. "Please," she pleaded, her voice breaking. "Take these too. Just… save us. Take us to Long Hai City. I'll repay you however I can."
The girls nearby went quiet. Even Grace's usual composure faltered as she stared at the gold. It wasn't greed—it was the realization of how desperate Sarah had become.
Ethan remained unmoved. He looked at the bars with calm detachment and said softly, "I have no need for gold. It's just shiny metal—can't feed anyone, can't stop a bullet, can't kill a zombie."
His voice was quiet but carried the weight of absolute authority.
Sarah's face turned ghostly pale. That gold was her final hope, the last card she had held onto for her daughter's future. But here stood a man who refused both wealth and temptation, whose clear eyes saw only survival and responsibility.
For a long, painful moment, she said nothing.
Then Ethan spoke again, his tone steady and sharp, cutting through the silence. "I can take you and your daughter to the survivor enclave in Long Hai City," he said. "But there are conditions."
Sarah's eyes flickered with hope again. She lifted her head as Ethan continued:
"First—before we reach the enclave, you must obey my orders. No acting on your own. Second—you will work. Do what you can, however small. Third—you'll receive food, but not necessarily enough to fill your stomach. We ration based on contribution. And fourth—if we're attacked, I will prioritize the safety of my team over yours. I'll do what I can to keep you safe, but I make no promises. Accept these conditions, and you can come. Refuse, and I won't stop you from staying here."
The rules were fair but merciless—spoken like a commander who had seen too much of life and death.
Sarah didn't even hesitate. "I accept! I'll do anything. I agree to everything!" she said in a rush, clutching her daughter close as tears filled her eyes.
Ethan nodded once. "Good. Then you have twenty minutes," he ordered. "Pack only what you absolutely need—medical items, clothes, water, nothing else. Forget the money. Forget the gold. They're useless now. When you're done, come back and help load supplies. Go. Every second counts."
His voice was firm, commanding, impossible to argue with.
Sarah quickly gathered her daughter, nodding again and again before running toward the stairs. This was her second chance—her only chance.
Luna watched Sarah's retreating figure, her beautiful eyes filled with complex emotions. "She's desperate…" she whispered softly. In her previous life of luxury, she had never seen this kind of human despair—where dignity meant nothing and survival was the only dream.
Julia folded her arms, looking slightly jealous but quiet. Grace simply sighed. In this world, beauty, wealth, and power had all been redefined. Only strength mattered.
---
Under the women's combined efforts, the next four hours passed in relentless motion. They loaded the last crates, checked the weapons, and secured every strap. The metallic scent of oil and sweat mixed in the air as evening crept closer.
Ethan stood by the truck, checking his rifle and counting the spare magazines. The cold steel in his hands was far more valuable than gold or paper. A rifle could defend, could hunt, could decide who lived another day.
His mind ran calculations—routes, fuel efficiency, risk zones, fallback positions. He was already planning three different escape routes in case of ambush.
Finally, when everything was ready, he climbed into the truck and gave a single, sharp command:
"Drive."
William nodded, his hands tightening on the wheel. The diesel engine growled to life, shaking the ground beneath them.
Two massive trucks rumbled forward under the fading orange glow of sunset, carrying a group of survivors, a mountain of supplies, and the fragile hope of a future.
As they left the Garden District behind, Sarah sat in the back beside her sleeping daughter, clutching her small hand tightly. Her heart was heavy, yet for the first time in days, there was a flicker of safety in her chest.
Ethan, sitting silently in the front seat, didn't look back. He knew that sentimentality was dangerous in this world. Behind them lay a dying city. Ahead—a thousand new dangers.
But that was fine. He had already accepted the truth of this new age.
Only the quick, the smart, and the strong survived.
And Ethan intended to be all three.
---
The next morning, beneath a blood-red sky, the city of Jiang Bridge—once the most bustling commercial district—had turned into a silent nightmare.
Tens of thousands of zombies crept from every direction, their rotting forms dragging across cracked asphalt and broken storefronts. The eerie silence of dawn shattered beneath the low, guttural moans that rose like a haunting chorus across the city.
Soon, the entire City of Jiang was submerged in an ocean of undead flesh. As the zombies feasted upon the corpses of the fallen, their evolution began—gray, sluggish figures transforming into P1s with hardened skin, S1s with speed unnatural for the dead, and even stranger variants whose silhouettes flickered in the fog like predators reborn.
Before a small, half-collapsed supermarket, five wandering zombies stood in eerie stillness.
Then—a sound.
From a narrow alley, a survivor burst out, his breathing ragged, a Straightblade gripped tightly in his trembling hands. With a flash of silver light, he activated his High-Speed Movement skill. His body became a blur, weaving between the zombies like a ghost slicing through shadows. The sword gleamed, and in mere seconds, all five zombies were decapitated.
Five orbs of white light shot into his chest. His heart pounded.
His eyes widened in disbelief.
"I've done it! I've finally reached level ten!"
The joy in his voice barely had time to echo before a crimson glow flickered from a shattered window above.
A Crimson Zombie—its body partially melted, veins pulsing with fire—opened its distorted maw. With a deafening hiss, a fireball burst forth like a miniature rocket.
Boom!
The explosion tore the air apart.
The survivor's upper body disintegrated in a flash of flame and heat.
Only his charred lower half collapsed onto the street, still twitching.
Two S1 zombies leapt from the shadows, landing on the corpse like beasts starved for centuries, tearing through what remained with grotesque delight.
The city was now a feeding ground. Hunters and prey had changed places. The humans—once rulers of this land—had become trembling food for their own nightmares. Strengthened survivors who once thought themselves powerful were dragged down one by one, their screams swallowed by the endless gnashing of teeth.
Jiang City had become hell incarnate.
Those who managed to survive had learned the cruelest lesson—every sound, every movement could mean death. Even the strengthened humans walked like ghosts now, silent and hollow-eyed, their hope stripped away by endless nights of hunger and fear.
---
On a long, desolate highway leading out of the city, the wind carried the smell of ash and blood.
In better days, this road was alive with the sound of engines, laughter, and music. Now, only the rusted shells of abandoned cars and the occasional wandering zombie marked its existence.
Two Volvo trucks sped down that ruined stretch of road, their heavy tires crushing bones and broken glass beneath them.
Ethan sat in the passenger seat, his sharp eyes scanning the wasteland outside the window. The skeletal remains of civilization stretched endlessly—billboards half torn, corpses slumped against burnt-out cars, and fields of twisted metal reflecting the dying sunlight.
He turned to William, who gripped the steering wheel tightly.
"How much longer until we reach Long Hai City?"
William gave a wry smile, fatigue evident in his eyes.
"Hard to say. I've never driven that far before. But according to the map, we're about halfway there."
Ethan nodded slightly, saying nothing. His mind ran a dozen calculations at once—routes, fuel, visibility, ambush risk, distance between abandoned cities. His gaze swept the horizon like a predator searching for patterns.
Then he saw it—twelve abandoned vehicles stacked deliberately across the highway, blocking both lanes.
"Damn it! Blocked again!" William cursed under his breath, slamming the brakes.
Ethan narrowed his eyes. This wasn't random. Cars that perfectly blocked both lanes never were. He had seen too many of these setups before—each one a potential death trap.
He stepped out of the truck, his boots crunching glass beneath them. The air was still. Too still.
Then movement—six figures emerged from both sides of the road, armed and alert.
They carried Type 81 rifles, their barrels gleaming faintly in the dim light. Each man looked hardened, the kind of survivor who'd long since traded empathy for bullets.
The leader was a bald man with a long scar running across his cheek, his expression carved in cruelty.
"Freeze! Don't move, or we'll shoot!" he barked, his voice sharp and guttural.
Inside the trucks, the girls gasped in fear. Some instinctively ducked lower behind the seats, trembling. Their faces—once soft and radiant even in hardship—were now pale, the glow of their beauty dulled by fear but not erased. Even covered in dust and exhaustion, their elegance was undeniable, like fragile flowers surviving in a world of ash.
Ethan, however, barely spared them a glance. His mind was already processing every angle—the shooters' positions, their stances, the time it would take for them to react.
He frowned slightly.
"Idiots," he muttered.
Then his form blurred.
Shadow Step.
He vanished into the darkness, reappearing behind the armed men before they even registered movement.
At the same time, Spawn leapt from the truck—a towering skeletal figure cloaked in black cloth, landing with the weight of a nightmare.
The six men panicked, shouting and firing wildly.
Bullets tore through the air, sparks flying off Spawn's bones.
But fleshless bones felt no pain.
Each bullet embedded uselessly into him, clinking against hardened marrow.